'Don't worry life away' Founder of cancer support site can't stop helping others

Sunday

Oct 14, 2012 at 3:15 AMOct 16, 2012 at 11:21 AM

Editor's note: This is one of a series of feature Sunday articles, highlighting October as Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

By Janine Mitchell

jmitchell@fosters.com

DOVER— It was like deją vu.At 42 years old, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer for the first time, then, like clockwork, Wendy McCoole was also diagnosed, also at age 42.Breast cancer dropped into Wendy's life unwelcome. She was a newlywed then forced to spend her “honeymoon period” in and out of doctors' offices.Prior to the illness, Wendy spent her days working 9 to 5 at a high-tech corporate job. But, after the shock of the diagnosis, she says, she just couldn't do it anymore.“I wasn't doing anything special (at my old job). Anybody could have done it. There was a huge part of me that just felt empty, like there was more I could be doing,” Wendy said.

With a hunger for helping others — her personal blog along the breast cancer road, Bald Wendy, as the catalyst — Wendy founded BreastCancerStories.org. Eventually, this encounter evolved over several years into a broader, more personal nonprofit, My Breast Cancer Support.When Wendy was going through treatments, she created a new page on her blog every time there was something new to share. Wendy says it saved her from repeating herself time and time again, and saved others from feeling like they were bothering her.“Sometimes people don't know what to say, so they don't say anything. This gave them a place to post questions or support and not feel bothersome,” she said.After a few months of sharing her story online, her friends and family passed her website on to coworkers and people in their social network who also had cancer.“So, it occurred to me that if my story helped my family and friends stay connected, and now it is helping other people who don't even know me, how cool would it be to create an environment where other breast cancer patients could share their stories,” Wendy realized.And, BreastCancerStories.org came to be. What makes journaling on BreastCancerStories.org unique from other social media broadcasts, she says, is sharing personal stories in an intimate and like-minded environment. The site also allows searching for others by location, diagnosis, and lifestyles.

After overwhelming success of BreastCancerStories.org, Wendy McCoole was still eager to gather the breast cancer community together, and reach out further. Feeling “stuck,” she says, she and her board of directors wanted to reinvent themselves without giving up helping breast cancer patients.Then, a light bulb went off over Wendy's head while attending a national breast cancer conference. She and her board members decided to make the nonprofit organization hyper-local.“We contacted the five major cancer centers within a half hour of the Portsmouth traffic circle and began asking them what the patients needed and wanted,” she said, noting speaking with the hospital representatives one-on-one helped exponentially. “Things that I thought were important may not have been, and the hospitals really helped us connect (with the patients' needs).”Now, My Breast Cancer Support has “hope chests” in area cancer centers, which they fill with movie tickets, gas gift cards, grocery gift cards, restaurant gift certificates and anything else a patient may want or need to alleviate emotional and financial stress during treatments. Beyond the gift certificates, My Breast Cancer Support can help pay for childcare, books for children, tuition to breast cancer retreats, gym memberships for yoga or other wellness needs, and even granting “last wishes.”“We had one woman whose cancer was spreading very quickly and all she wanted to do was go to see (the off Broadway show) “Wicked.” So we got the tickets donated, and fundraised to send her and some family down in a limo,” said Wendy.The 501(c) 3 non-profit program is run solely on grants and fundraisers. Surprisingly, Wendy very rarely gets to meet the women, men and families she helps.However, she keeps a constant desire to do more and help local unknown cancer patients — without connecting names or faces.“Stress can make you sick by itself. So, we don't want people worrying about how they're going to feed their family. A lot of times people are too proud to ask, so we're really here to help them through the challenging time and take the pressure off of them,” Wendy says.Wendy once met a woman who lived in constant fear of her cancer. The woman said, “Aren't you afraid of it coming back and killing you?”And Wendy insisted, “Yes, it's fine to be a little scared, angry, sad and concerned. But, don't worry life away. You can't stress about the possibility of it coming.”

“The number one risk factor for breast cancer is being a woman,” Wendy McCoole told her 18-year-old daughter.When Wendy was diagnosed with breast cancer, her daughter responded honestly, “I'm going to get this too aren't I?” knowing her grandmother was also stricken with the disease. But, Wendy didn't have the same type of breast cancer her mother did; it wasn't genetic. One thing Wendy surely did inherit from her mother, though, is constantly wanting to do more.“She was actually the cofounder of the N.H. Breast Cancer Coalition, and a long-standing board member of BreastCancerStories,” Wendy said of her mother, who passed away early this year.Her mother also worked tirelessly to form one of the first breast cancer support groups in Dover. “It took a while because doctors didn't think patients wanted to talk about it,” Wendy explained about her mother's persistence to help fellow patients, “I got that from her — to look out for the people who aren't being heard, or who don't have a voice.”Wendy's mother passed away after her fourth battle with breast cancer in February. But her legacy lives on in Wendy's diligent work and strong family bonds.“I let my nieces and nephews paint my bald head like an Easter egg when I was bald during chemo treatments,” she laughs, “I sat down on the floor and let them go at it.”Wendy was proud of what she calls a “kick-butt bald head.” Her peace of mind stuck with her throughout her days of treatment, surgery and into her work with My Breast Cancer Support.“(Breast cancer) helped me look at life differently, to appreciate more, to help more, to open my eyes to issues that people face that the general population doesn't understand. I wake up every day excited to go to work and ready to help somebody,” says Wendy as tears fill her eyes, “I feel fulfilled, I feel like I've finally reached a point in my life where I'm doing something with my talents and my passion.”